your low self-esteem is holding you back as an ADHDer
How I built an internal foundation that set me up to fly - with ADHD!
I lived with undiagnosed ADHD my whole childhood and it changed the way I saw the world drastically. I started out in elementary as a very smart little girl who was praised for achieving high. I made great grades. I was always reading under the desk (which shows I was inattentive but it was for a “smart” reason so nobody cared). I would inhale books all day. I wrote poems. I won essay contests.
But as I got older, things started to decline. By the time I was 11, I couldn’t keep up with the books we were reading in class, as much as I loved to read. I cheated for the first time when I was 10 because I couldn’t get myself to study. My desk slowly got messier. I started getting chastised more often by teachers.
By middle school, I was getting my first Cs and Ds. I was getting calls home about missed assignments. I was even told to aim lower.
In high school, I picked myself back up by my bootstraps and started achieving again. I was within the top of my class. I even got into an Ivy League school. And that’s where my problems really started.
In all of that time, I had never gotten an ADHD diagnosis. I had simply chalked up my failures to personality issues and learned to cope. That means I got to university with no resources or awareness of my needs. I spent my first year struggling with the lack of structure that comes from university life. I would dip in and out of libraries, too restless to engage in the multi-hour study sessions everyone else did. I drank a lot of late night coffees to pull through at the last minute. My grades themselves were fine. But the process of starting and finishing was a massive struggle for me.
Then came COVID. The weight of an international crisis combined with the pull to hang out on my laptop all day really brought out the worst of my ADHD. Luckily, around this time, people started making more content about their ADHD, which I resonated heavily with. I decided to seek out a diagnosis and finally received one. That one move changed my entire life. I had so much more access to tools and content to help me understand myself.
Unfortunately by then, a lot of damage had been done. Over time, I had internalized a lot of stories about who I was and what I was capable of that impacted the way I met my day. I had tried to carry out plans and projects many times when I was younger and was met with failure and a quick drop off after a period of intense passion. Here are some words that I would have used to describe my personality:
Lazy
Procrastinator
Unfocused
Failure
No follow through
Disorganized
Type B
Floaty
Free-spirited
It didn’t matter that deep down, I had an intense desire for an organized life, I loved watching productivity content and studying, and I had made it into an Ivy League as a low-income student with no connections. I didn’t see those parts of me as who I was, but as luck and chance. Living without a diagnosis had thoroughly impacted my self-esteem.
Over time, I’ve been able to learn myself and do some pretty amazing things with ADHD which required levels of consistency, internal validation, and follow-through that many people aren’t even particularly interested in developing. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. I had an idea for a project in something I’d never done before. There was no deadline and no one pushing for it. I worked on that project almost every single day until I saw it grow. I overcame my own rejection sensitivity and proposed this project at school, despite feeling deeply inadequate. And now, I’m almost done. I broke every ADHD rule and did everything we’re not supposed to be “able” to do.
And one of the biggest lessons I learned was that your self-esteem as a neurodivergent person is your golden ticket to living a life that defies expectations — not a life that makes you a productive worker that will survive a job you hate, but a life that centers what you love and gives you the freedom to fulfil your own desires.
So here are some of the biggest lessons I learned that helped me rebuild my self-esteem and find success as a neurodivergent person.
Number One: Your ADHD is not your personality.
Living an undiagnosed life meant that rather that understanding that I had challenges that needed support, I constantly received the message that my personality was inadequate for achieving success. All of my authentic personality facets — my love for academia, my intense dedication, my sense of vision and drive — were all buried under the struggles that stopped me from carrying those out to completion. Eventually, I gave in. I built a new identity around what my friends teased me about or what my teachers told me. I saw myself as a goofy, floaty, clumsy girl who just loved to live a free-spirited life. That was easier than unpacking who I authentically was underneath my neurotype. And that meant that I didn’t really like myself. I had so many ambitions and desires underneath the “personality” of my ADHD. I didn’t feel like people took me seriously or respected me in the same way they respected other people and that made me feel lower.
Taking some time to really sit with all of those aspects of yourself that you gave up on over time will change your life. Think of all the projects you discarded, all the dreams you decided weren’t for you. A lot of those are actually your true self. Just because your neurotype made them harder to flesh out does not mean they’re not you. You ARE organized. You ARE a good potential business leader. You ARE an authority. That is who you are. Your ADHD just presents challenges that make those parts of you harder to see. And the sooner you understand that, the sooner you can start to like yourself more, show up in the world more authentically, and find the symptom management tools that work for you.
Number Two: Stop trying to copy neurotypical systems and honor your own.
Us ADHDers have learned to see our systems as lesser than or less dignified because they don’t fit the mold of a neurotypical person. I can have the exact same outcome produced a different way but I’ll still somehow see mine as worse. We have learned to see discipline as neurotypical. Routine as neurotypical. Diginity and uprightness as neurotypical. Our systems are sillier or goofier or quirkier, even if they do the same thing.
We see the “respectable” way as doing it the neurotypical way — everyday, no deviation, exactly the same as everyone else. But what does respectable mean to you? What does enough mean to you? What does professional mean to you? Because as long as you’re attributing those words to a system your brain is not made for, you will not see yourself as in alignment with those traits.
I learned that trying to make my ADHD brain “do” everyday, routine, perfect, didn’t work. And every time I was going through that cycle again, my self-esteem was getting lower and lower. I thought I would always fail to be respectable. But I re-wrote and realized that my system was respectable too. It was unique to my brain. It made sense for me. It produced amazing results. So why should I see mine as lesser than?
The point of identifying and working with your ADHD should not be to finally be able to operate like a neurotypical person. It should be to embrace your unique way of moving through the world.
Instead of trying to fit the systems you see as professional '“enough” or disciplined “enough” or dignified “enough”, rewrite your definition and include yourself in it. And your self-esteem will build because you will honor yourself and honor the way you’re wired without losing the attributes you’d like to embody. Focus on your output and the way you feel while you’re doing it, not an image of what that should look like.
Number Three: Stop fighting failure.
Because of my low self-esteem, I had determined deep down that I was a failure. If I started something, I already expected I would fail. I would fail to implement a habit. I would fail to complete a project. I would fail to live up to my expectations.
You think I’m going to tell you to stop calling yourself a failure? It’s the exact opposite. Embrace the failure in you.
People who are going into exposure therapy for OCD have to go through an incredibly difficult task. Rather than succumbing to the pull to do something to soothe their inner fears, they are forced to face them head on. If they are afraid that they might be hit by a car, they have to tell themselves that they will be hit by a car. Even if it’s completely irrational anyways to think that a car would hit them, even if you could logically stand there and tell them all the reasons that the car would not hit them, the effect would be counterintuitive. The only way to heal is to expose yourself to that deep fear inside of you.
So I’m here to tell you that you will fail. You have to know that you’re afraid to fail. And you have to accept that you will fail. And then it doesn’t seem so bad anymore.
We spend our whole lives as neurodivergent people coming up with all kinds of soothing mechanisms and avoidance tactics to deal with the feeling that we are constantly failing in a neurotypical world. And that robs us of the energy and excitement we have to carry out the things that we love and actually master the activities that we know deep down could bring us deep joy. We engage in all sorts of horrible self-talk when things start to go downhill or we don’t carry out that thing we want to do.
And once you’ve accepted that you will fail, you can learn a new lesson — that there is no such thing as failure. Every “failure” is a learning opportunity. That habit you didn’t implement perfectly right away is an opportunity for reflection. How can you make it easier for yourself? What didn’t go right right away? Can you make it more fun? Can you make it more accessible?
Here’s a secret they don’t want you to know: neurotypical people fail too. Yes, I know. What a surprise! Over time, we build up an image of neurotypical people as these sorts of impenetrable warriors. They start their assignments right away. They build a habit perfectly the first time around. All of them are out there giving TEDTalks and running multi-million dollar businesses. It’s just us chumps that are down here struggling. And it’s not true. They procrastinate too. They get lazy too. They over-spend too. They do it all. We just do it for different reasons sometimes.
Failure is part of life. It takes countless failures to build a success. The sooner you put yourself out there and start failing, the better — because you’ll learn. Regardless of how the Internet might present it, building a life you love is a lifelong process, as is mastering anything. You probably won’t get up and do it perfectly today. It’s going to take a while to learn to do EVERYTHING. I learned how to build consistency in my career. But I’ll be honest, I haven’t mastered putting the laundry in the washing machine straight onto the drying rack yet. And that’s okay. I’ll get there. The life you want is a skill, not a natural product of having a “good” brain. And it takes time.
Those are a few of the mindset shifts I made that helped me build my self-esteem as someone with ADHD. And that made a world of difference for me. If you think you can’t do it, you won’t get creative. If you think you have to be wired differently for it to be possible, you won’t find a way to make it accessible to you.
The world is a cruel place for undiagnosed neurodivergent people. And TBH even when you’re diagnosed or medicated, it’s pretty hard still. But changing your story around success will help you see yourself as you are and build the kind of self-love necessary to develop resilience in your day-to-day. And that’s how you get to where you need to go.